May 2010

Yesterday was the American Mother’s Day. All around – Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and commercials – all we heard was about moms. How great they are, how important they are. How everyone’s mom is the best.

I don’t know where I was last year on Mother’s Day. I don’t remember feeling the sadness and emptiness than I do now. It would have been 2 months after she died. So if last year it just slid by, why didn’t it this year?

Somehow, this year it was harder. I actually ended up filtering out all of the tweets that my friends mentioned “mom” or “mother’s day” in. I just couldn’t handle it. I’ve previously mentioned how my mood goes through swings. I’m usually OK, but then all I can do it think about my mother and cry. It’s been a couple months since it’s hit me hard, but that’s where I am right now.

No, I don’t feel like going out. No, I don’t feel like talking. Please don’t take it personally. It’s not The Boy’s fault that I’m not meeting people right now, we live together, we handle evenings apart perfectly. I’m just not in the mood.

And yesterday was a slap in the face. When things get bad, I usually convince myself that I am very lucky, that I got to have my mom for 31 years, that she saw me through school, and college, and saw me begin a career that I love. Others haven’t. But yesterday? Yesterday that made NO difference. All I saw was tweets like this one and I just couldn’t control my feelings.

I actually have a Mother’s Day card that I had bought for my mom and never had a chance to give her, and it is SOOO me and her. It’s just laying there, in my nightstand, a card that I will never ever be able to send. I can’t use it for someone else. It’s not a birthday, a bar mitzvah, a wedding, the birth of a child.

There’s a limited supply of people who can receive that card. I had one. And now I have none.

Sunday was my dad’s 60th birthday, so we threw him a surprise party on Saturday night. My sisters and I, along with my dad’s wife, decided to make as much as we could ourselves instead of catering in. Everyone pitched in and said what they’d prepare, and I said I’d make Mom’s quiche (which I’ve made several times before). We were set.

On Monday I went to my recipe notepad to make sure I had all the ingredients I needed at home.

I couldn’t find the recipe.

I remained calm, and on Tuesday I tried to find it again in other places.

I couldn’t find the recipe.

On Wednesday I went through my emails and frantically texted my sisters about the recipe – none of them had it – and called my grandmother – who didn’t know it either.

I could not find my mom’s famous quiche recipe.

And I just started to cry.

It is SUCH an insane reason to cry, but I guess that’s what it’s going to be like now. I hadn’t actually cried about my mom in a couple months, I think, my longest period yet. But I couldn’t stop. Here was a piece of my mom that was a staple in my life that would forever be gone.

One more recipe taken to the grave.

But this is different than most of her recipes: You see – I actually had this one, and I lost it. Comparing the two is like comparing addition to quantum physics – absolutely immeasurable.

I was inconsolable.

I tweeted my frustration and many of my friends/followers sent me links to other great-looking quiches on various websites.

But it wasn’t my mom’s quiche.

I swear it was one of the biggest breakdowns I’ve had since my mom got sick – and it was over a quiche.

This post actually has a happy ending – on Thursday I actually found the recipe hidden in a random book (no idea how it got there), and prepared it – and it received excellent reviews.

You can be sure, however, that it is now written in my permanent cookbook and labeled “Mom’s Amazing Corn-Mushroom-Cheese Quiche – Don’t Dare Lose This!”